Born and raised in the harsh Chicago winters, Susan Solomon, an expert chemist in atmospheric research, knows well what she is talking about when warning of climate change. Luis Miguel Ariza has drawn a profile of the woman who first measured the hole in the ozone layer .
There must be something in the doctor’s personalitySusan Solomonthat draws her toward impossible challenges. In his bookColdest march, this American chemistry puts himself in the shoes of Captain Robert Falcon Scott during his expedition to Antarctica, in November 1911. In those times when man believed that technological advances could give him mastery over nature – shortly before the tragedy of the Titanic-, the English explorer and his team traveled 1,450 km at temperatures of -37º C. In January 1912, Scott reached the South Pole only to discover that a group of Norwegians, led by Roald Amundsen, had arrived a month before. After the fiasco, on the return trip, Scott and his men died on the Ross Ice Shelf in a very intense cold wave that, according to Solomon, produced temperatures 12 or more points below the established thermal average in area. Time laid a death trap for them.
Solomon, the daughter of a teacher and an insurance agent, took her first steps as a scientist long before she met this frozen kingdom. In an interview with the American journalist Lee Katterman recalled thatShe was fascinated by the underwater world when at nine she saw a documentary by Jacques Cousteau on television. That silent nature had a quality that did not fit the analytical mindset of a girl interested in chemistry. “I found that biology was not very quantitative,” he told Katterman. In high school, he won third prize in a national competition for an experiment that consisted of deciphering the proportion of oxygen in a mixture of gases. Then he studied Chemistry at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where he investigated the intriguing atmosphere of Jupiter and, later, that strange thing that we call air, the thin layer of gas that keeps us alive.
In 1977, Solomon joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, where he still maintains his office today. There she contacted the prestigious scientist Paul Crutzen, who encouraged her to study theterrestrial atmospheric chemistry. Later, at the University of Berkeley in California, he met two of his mentors, Harold Johnston and Mario Molina. Before he turned 30, Solomon was already reviewing the work of older colleagues for publication in trade magazines.
In 1974, the aforementioned Molina and Sherwood Rowland launched a hypothesis that was received with skepticism, but that 21 years later awarded them the Nobel Prize in Chemistry:chlorofluorocarbonos (CFCs)which were used as refrigerants, solvents, propellants for pressure containers and in the manufacture of white cork decomposed in the stratosphere and released chlorine atoms. These reacted with ozone, which meant its destruction. Until then, no one had considered how important this gas is to life on Earth, and the idea continued to sound like a wacko until scientists reported in 1985 that the ozone layer over Antarctica was waning during the southern spring. The following year, several experts, including Susan Solomon, were dispatched to the area for measurements.
Between August and October1986, Solomon wasworking in the dark polar winterand in 1987 he returned to complete the task. This is how he recalled those times during the 2009 Volvo Environment Award reception:? Despite the difficulties,going to Antarctica turned out to be one of the most exciting experiences of my life, not only because of the detection of ozone lossBut because we found the chemical components that caused the hole, in particular, the chlorofluorocarbons? The white continent may be a cold place, but it has left its mark on this expert’s heart. Her measurements dumped unusually high amounts of chlorine into the upper atmosphere, but, as she herself has confessed, “I didn’t have the feeling that I was making history, at least at the beginning; at the end of the second year I began to realize how serious it was. was the issue. ” He then suggested in several articles “that polar stratospheric clouds could play a role in this unusual chemistry”; in fact, they acted as a kind of magnet that facilitated the mechanisms of destruction of the vital gas. On his return, already in his NOAA laboratory, Solomon published an extraordinarystudy on the ozone hole that was a turning point. Shortly after, the historic Montreal Protocol banning the manufacture of CFCs was signed. For his contribution, he has received a barrage of awards, including the US Department of Commerce Gold Medal (1989) and the US National Medal of Science (2000).
“I firmly believe thatscience is a guide for the action of society. When people understand what we are talking about and what the possible consequences are, surprising things can happen. “In 2002, Solomon co-chaired Group One of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which convinced the world of the evidence of warming. global, a much more arduous task than modeling the climate and drawing potential scenarios to cope with an average temperature increase of one to four degrees. “Imagine what it is like to gather the representatives of 130 governments in a room to agree on them. It was a tremendous moment. Luckily we were very well prepared, they described us as an army that nobody could stop. “In 2007, the IPCC received the Nobel Peace Prize together with Al Gore.
After the ozone hole, global warming became the next milestone in this woman’s career, who was born on January 19, 1956 in Chicago. The goal now is more ambitious if possible. In a recent article, Solomon warned that global warming is now inevitable.Even if greenhouse gas emissions derived from human activity are stopped now, the effects of climate change will be felt for a thousand years, because the oceans absorb excess CO2 very slowly. “In a very simple analogy, our carbon emissions mean thatwe are turning up the thermostat and we don’t know how to turn it down“But Solomon argues that it is key to base our decisions on scientific knowledge, something that can lead to unprecedented social transformation.? I think the world is going to unite around this issue. Wherever you look, new technologies are being developed. more efficient and cheaper to generate renewable energy.I am optimistic. In the long term, we will succeed?.
Luis Miguel Ariza
